There are many innovative ways to increase business exposure via online marketing; many methods are free if you know where to look, and a lot of other methods can be very costly. In order to be successful these days it is almost mandatory you have a presence on the web but most people think by simply creating a website you will increase sales or awareness of your business. This is where you would be wrong. Here are a number of methods you can implement to increase the exposure to your business.
Social Media
This is probably the easiest method to implement to increase awareness and can be done at no cost to you. There are a large number of websites to choose from for social media (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google Plus+, etc). Social networking sites are a way to reach a large number of people online.
Creating a profile page appealing to the target audience for your business and getting in contact with as many people as you possibly can to market your business. But be aware to not come across as “spammy”, otherwise you will have a hard time attracting a large audience for marketing purposes.
I know well too many people who go through Facebook and add every person they can possibly find and all they do is throw product and services in your face trying to get you to buy. This tactic in my experience never works out. You want to build a relationship with your audience and give them a reason to do business with you instead of throwing “BUY THIS, BUY THAT” in their face.
Create a Blog
Creating a blog is also free and extremely effective, and I cannot stress enough that every business should create a blog. It is a good way to climb the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) ladder on search engines quickly by adding multiple sources for people to find you. Blogs are a great way to keep in touch with potential clients, announce successes and news about your business. Blogs help create relationships and allow you to provide more descriptive information you may have not been able to stuff into your website. Use it to advertise upcoming events or newly released products.
Blogs and social media in many ways go hand in hand and by using social media you can build a bigger audience for your blog, you will want to make sure to embed all your social media sites into the blog as well. Be sure to also update your blog regularly, this will help to increase rankings through the search engines which will in turn increase business exposure.
Email marketing
This is a method you can use but I typically shy away from it. Most people don’t like spam emails and using this marketing tactic could even possibly damage your reputation. Sending out email blasts has been a marketing tactic used for years and slowly over time is becoming less and less effective. If you are to use this method you can pay for subscriber lists to a magazine or buy lists of email addresses from other businesses.
Giveaways or Online Contests
This is a fun way to attract a large customer base. Everyone loves free stuff, especially if it’s completely free to obtain free stuff. Use your Facebook account or blog to put together a giveaway and have the only way to enter is for them to share and like your profile page or follow your blog. This will cause a spider web effect and cause your company awareness to spread like a virus through social media; everyone will share and like it because everyone wants free stuff.
I would host a monthly giveaway (or more depending on your services) to attract more business and this will also be effective to gain a lot of repeat business. If I was to know a business had regularly hosted giveaways I would stay in contact with them to take advantage of obtaining free goodies.
Press Release
This would probably be one of the more (if not most) expensive methods of online marketing. Put together a beautifully written article going over the top focus points of your business and get it shared through a press release. Prweb.com is a very popular site to use for this service and expect to pay $200 plus for each PR. A press release is shared among many news sites as an official statement that attracts millions of readers and is one of the best ways to build increased business exposure very quickly.
Promotional Videos
This is a great tactic to use on YouTube.com or other popular video sharing sites (as well as your blog). Put together a video as promoting highlights or new product releases as a teaser in order to get your viewers wanting more. You can host these on many sites and implement them on your business site, blog and social media profiles.
Participate in Blog Commenting and Forums
There are forums on the 1000’s upon 1000’s of topics and are used as an excellent internet marketing tool to promote your business. Participate in forum discussions, create new threads on interesting related topics to your industry and make relevant posts that contribute to the topic at hand. It is not stressed enough when doing blog commenting or replying to forum discussions you provide content that contributes to the topic. You do not want to come across like a spammer, you need to make sure you can advertise but at the same time contribute to the conversation and give something to share that will, in turn, cause others to share your post as well.
Optimize your Site via SEO
This is the most important way, in the long run, to increase business exposure, whether you are an eCommerce solutions company, blog, services site, etc. Every topic covered in this post can all be used to help your Search Engine Optimization efforts for your business website.
SEO is both implemented internally and externally for your site. There are 1000’s of companies that offer SEO services and 1000’s that offer SEO information for free. SEOMOZ and seo.com are my 2 favorite resources to use for SEO purposes.
They contribute findings and new ways to market your business on a regular basis. I would recommend following their blogs for all the information you could ever ask for. Google right now is the king search engine and you will want to implement your SEO to favor Google. Google is all about the end user experience so when in doubt ”Focus on the user and all else will follow”.